1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique useful for transmitting a program to a device on a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there is known a technique useful for downloading firmware of an image forming apparatus from a server, which transmits firmware, via a network and updating the firmware. Such a technique is discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-129362. Further, there is also a technique, which is discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-15794, where a server selects an appropriate combination of firmware according to configuration information of an image forming apparatus or version information of the firmware, and transmits the firmware to the image forming apparatus.
In recent years, the scale of firmware of image forming apparatuses is very large, and the firmware is updated more frequently. Thus, the combination of firmware also needs to be updated more frequently. For this reason, user interfaces (UI) useful in easily changing a combination of firmware have been developed. Further, recent servers that transmit firmware are equipped with firmware managing functions such as release date scheduling of new firmware.
However, according to the conventional firmware updating, the firmware combination in a firmware set already released to the market may be changed due to an error of an operator. If such an error occurs, firmware sets of the same version number but with different contents may be distributed. Then, users may be confused and the provider of the firmware will have difficulty in providing backup service.